When Lisa was sixteen, she had her heart broken for the first time. She had been dating stupid-ass Dwight for five months, and she was sure he was the love of her life. It was that kind of passion that was easily mistaken by love, and after one week dating, they were already telling each other about the love they felt for one another. He had been her first; her first kiss, first time having sex, and it would only make sense that he was her first heart break, too.

She distinctly remembered the scene of her going to his place, all happy that they would get to spend the whole evening together, since his parents weren't at home, so they would have the house for themselves. Lisa had planned to make a romantic dinner for him, the kind that they would never have in normal circumstances, because Dwight just didn't like all that "girly" stuff that hurt his masculinity so badly; after the dinner, they would watch some movie and then, in the middle of the movie, they would make out on his couch. She had put on her best clothes and lingerie, put on some body lotion and perfume, even make up, which she wasn't used to wear frequently.

Lisa heard the moans before even stopping her car in front of his house; at first, she thought it was coming from one of the neighbors; after all, Dwight lived in a pretty crowded neighborhood. However, as soon as she got out from the car, she realized that she was wrong.

The smell of sweat and sex was a slap to her face, specially his smell, the one she knew so clearly. Sure enough, when she entered the house, already shaking with anger, she saw him and that girl, Lucy, banging each other on the same couch they had slept together so many times.

The evening didn't end well when Lisa, with all her anger, kicked Dwight's ass into oblivion since with her wolf genes, she was way stronger than him. He never stood a chance; Lucy ran away from the house, never looking back at the man who was having his ass served to him by his girlfriend, and Lisa never bothered to go after her.

After that, she entered her car, shaking as a leaf and trying hard not to lose control. At that point, she already had a good grip on her shifting abilities, enough that she didn't shift anytime someone pissed her off – which was rather frequent.

She remembered staying up all night crying – because she had feelings, after all -, and listening to a Whitesnake CD. One of the songs, Looking for love, had her crying even harder, particularly when David Coverdale sang "I'm looking for love all around me, Looking for love to surround me", which was exactly how she was feeling at the moment.

Looking for love, that's what Lisa had been doing during her teen age. As cheesy as it may sound, the girl never had much love from her parents or family, so she always searched for it in failing relationships, putting too much hope into one person who normally wasn't worth it.

Anyway, a week after she broke up with Dwight, she started dating Jax, then Luke, and a bunch of others until she was condemned to stay with Holland. After years of disappointments, Lisa finally accepted that love wasn't something for her. She would never find her soul mate, and she was okay with it.

Until, of course, the moment she set her eyes on the blonde vampire.

She was speeding through Forks, her mind wondering widely around everything that had happened in that Wednesday morning. Her fingers gripped the steering wheel of her car so hard that it was starting to brand the leather; her heart bumped loudly against her rib cage and her breathing was irregular.

And all that because of a man. A vampire man, no less.

The figure of that pale, beautiful face came back to her mind – his honey, curly locks; golden eyes, amazing lips, strong jaw, his lean, muscular body and scent -, it all made her throat constrict, and the need to turn back and claim him to her was strong. It really felt like there he was a magnet and she was a simple piece of metal attracted to him.

That feeling had never happened to her before; she knew it, though, from stories and legends told to her when she was only a little girl. It was known that wolves had mates for their entire lives; they were social creatures, after all, and they needed to have someone at their side to breed, reproduce, and make the pack stronger. In the legends of her clan, female wolves were the ones to find and conquer their mates, since it all started with them and they were the ones able to carry and reproduce the lineage – though they could only do so with humans, just as the first wolf had done centuries back. In order to make it easier for them, Vánagandr, the wolf father, decided each wolf would have their own hálft, the one that would complete them and make them stronger.

It was all legends, though, and in Lisa's clan usually the wolves only used the humans to reproduce, preferring to marry and have families amongst their own kind. Therefore, she had never heard of wolves finding their mates on humans, much less on other races. Now, she had no idea how she would act, especially since she didn't know if the hálft felt the same for her.

She was damned.

"Gosh, why?" she asked loudly, shaking her head to try and clear her mind from his image; it was no use. His handsome face would be marked forever in her mind, like a tattoo.

She wanted to cry, really. Of all places on earth she could have gone to, she just had to come to the one place where she could find her mate. It had to be a joke; all she had wanted when she left her hometown, her pack, was to be normal. Yet, so far, nothing had been normal in Forks, on the contrary. The more she got used to the town, the more weird things happened.

Her cellphone started ringing, but she ignored it completely. She didn't want to talk to anyone right now; she just wanted to… run.

Stopping her car on the road, she didn't even mind closing it when she entered the woods and ran with all the strength and will she had; soon, she was peeling all her clothes, leaving a trail of fabric behind her before shifting into her best form. Her true form.

After that, it was all a haze of trees, smells, and the cold hair caressing her white fur while she ran without caring about the way she was tracing.


Lisa returned after hours in the woods, wondering about her life and the ways things had worked so far. Needless to say, she came back to her car with no answers whatsoever; her mind was even more confused than before, but at least she was calmer and not wanting to leave everything behind anymore. She took her cellphone to see what time it was, and saw there were five missing calls from Bella. She remembered, then, the way she had left, and felt even worse for making a fool of herself in front of the vampires.

She particularly worried more about one of them.

Damn, she didn't even know his name.

Sighing, she decided to call Bella back. It was around five, so she probably had already left the school.

The phone rang two times before the brunette picked up.

"Finally, Lis! I've been calling you for hours…"

Lisa rolled her eyes in annoyance. "I know the feeling," she answered sarcastically. She was still mad at her friend, even if now it was just a general feeling in the back of her mind.

"Sorry," Bella said after ten seconds in silence. "I...I want to see you. We need to talk. Are you home?"

"Getting there in ten."

"I'll stop by."

When Lisa pulled her car in her driveway, she was surprised that Bella was already there; the brunette was leaning on the side of the shiny Volvo that, as Lisa figured out, belonged to her vampire boyfriend. The blonde sighed when she saw him there, his golden eyes staring straight at her while he whispered to Bella "be careful", which honestly offended Lisa.

Bella and her had been friends for months now, and she had never hurt the brunette once – as opposite to the Cullen, since Bella had a lot of scars around her body-, damn she had even helped Bella against a vampire. But there he was, acting as if Lisa was a minefield that Bella was stepping over – one wrong movement, and she would burst right at her face.

She closed her door and calmly walked towards the couple – she had already almost lost control earlier in front of that vampire, so she wouldn't repeat her mistake twice. Bella looked at her with concern marking her features, her bottom lip red from all the biting she had been doing.

"Hey," Lisa greeted, making sure she was focusing on Bella and not on the statue standing beside her. The brunette opened a small smile, relieved that her friend was back.

"Hey, Lis, can we talk?"

Lisa sighed, but nodded. They really needed to talk after all that had happened in the last couple of days, also what happened that day. "Of course,"

Bella, then, turned to the vampire. "You can go now…It's okay." Lisa pretended that her tone didn't bother her, but it did.

Edward suddenly stared at her, his eyes boring into hers. "If anything happen, call me. I'll be here in a second,"

Lisa scoffed, her dislike for that vampire increasing by each word he uttered. "Don't you need an invitation or something to barge into someone's house?" she snapped, rolling her eyes when he frowned.

"Edward, just go. Please." Bella asked, holding his arm and sending him a serious look.

He nodded, but didn't leave right away. Lisa, then, grabbed Bella's arm and practically carried her to her home while the brunette waved to her boyfriend. When they finally got inside her house, she made sure to close the door while still looking at him, smirking at the look of utter dislike she saw on his face.

The feeling was absolutely mutual.

After she closed the door, she and Bella stood there awkwardly staring at each other. The brunette started, once again, biting on her bottom lip, something that she used to do when she was nervous or anxious. Lisa sighed loudly, passing her hands through her face, feeling very tired of all the unnecessary drama going on between her and Bella. She just wanted to solve the situation and move on.

"So, what do you want to talk about?" she asked, moving towards her kitchen to grab something to eat; she was starving after not having eaten for hours. She grabbed a bowl and her favorite cereal box.

Bella followed her, nervousness irradiating from her in waves. She sat down at the table, putting both her hands over it. "I wanted to apologize." She said quietly, looking down to the surface of the table.

"What for?"

Oh yes, Lisa wasn't going to let Bella go that easily. People might forgive her right away – her father, Jake -, but she wouldn't. Bella had done once again something incredibly selfish, negligent, and she had to know that her acts had consequences. Lisa loved her as a friend, but she was getting tired of the immature attitude coming from the girl who was eighteen already, for god's sake.

Bella looked back at her, her lips turning slightly downwards. "For the way I acted with you and Jake… Right after you took care of me," she shook her head, her face flushing all over. "Also for not letting you know I was okay. It's just…so many things happened, Lis. I don't even know where to start."

"From the beginning would be a good idea," Lisa offered, sitting right in front of Bella with her bowl and already putting a spoon full of cereal in her mouth. It was about time Bella opened up to her about everything – the Cullens, how she ended up dating a vampire knowing what he was, why he left… the scars.

"Ok," Bella agreed, feeling relieved that Lisa at least wasn't cursing at her anymore. She realized that she owed her, the person she had begun considering as best friend together with Jacob some answers and Lisa was more than willing to listen to them. So she started. "It all started with me moving in to Forks, of course. Edward's family had been living here for a couple of years, but they were still seen as 'outsiders' and they obviously stood out. So when I got to school and saw them at lunch, I was curious. They were all so beautiful, like the kind of people you only see in movies…"

Lisa rolled her eyes, though she knew that for humans, vampires were unbearably beautiful – it was part of their nature to allure their prey, after all.

"I never acted on my curiosity, though; I just watched them from afar, like most of the other people did. Edward and I were in the same Biology class, and in the first day, when I entered the class, I passed in front of the fan and Edward smelled me."

She went on talking about the way Edward had tried to change classes, and when he didn't succeed, he stopped going to school altogether. According to him, it was unbearable to be close to her without wanting to kill her.

"So romantic," Lisa interrupted sarcastically, which made Bella roll her eyes.

"Anyway, he came back and started talking to me. That's how we began to get close…"

She told Lisa about the car accident and how Edward had stopped the van from hitting her in the parking lot; also when he saved her from a couple of guys that were harassing her in the street. That made Lisa think that Bella was really a magnet for trouble, and she had no idea how the girl was still alive to see the sun after so many 'adventures'.

"I guess that even though he was attracted to my blood, he couldn't stay away from me." Bella shrugged like it was normal that a vampire that wanted to drink your blood followed you around. "We started dating then. I even met the rest of his family, his mom and dad,"

"What?" Lisa quirked one eyebrow in curiosity.

"The Cullens don't see themselves as only a coven – they are a familly. Edward's father, well, Carlisle, was the one to change him, his wife, Esme, Rosalie and Emmett."

She didn't know who Rosalie and Ermit were, but she noticed when Bella shifted uncomfortably on the chair, her eyes darting anywhere but on Lisa.

"Alice and…Jasper came later and joined the family."

Lisa winced, knowing that Jasper, the name Bella almost was afraid to pronounce, was the blond vampire that turned out to be her mate. She repeated the name in her mind, finding it weird and comforting at the same time. It made her remember the man who owned it, and her heart started to beat fast all over again.

Thank god Bella decided to continue her tale and snap Lisa out of her momentary daze.

"They weren't very comfortable with my relationship with Edward at the beginning, some more than others," the brunette muttered the last part, shaking her head. "But eventually they understood we were not staying away from each other."

"Okay," Lisa nodded, wrapping her mind around all the information Bella was giving her. "How did they manage to control their thirst around you, though? Isn't it something hard for a vampire to do?"

Bella smiled. "Well, they're not the usual type of vampire. They call themselves vegetarians."

"Beg your pardon?" Lisa retorted, confused as hell. This time, Bella chuckled with an amused glint in her eyes.

"They drink from animals only. According to Edward, it's not the most delicious thing in the world, but it satiates them to the point they don't need human blood."

Lisa made a sound of understanding, nodding. "That's why they have yellow and not red eyes." She mused.

"Exactly."

"It must be amazing to walk around a bunch of humans with blood in their veins, hmm?" Lisa commented, putting another spoon of cereal in her mouth. She knew the Cullens went to school as a way to cloak that they were centenary, bloodsucking vampires, but she had yet to see how they acted around humans.

Bella nodded jerkily, looking away towards Lisa's window. "For some of them it's more difficult…"

"Who?" she asked, ready to keep an extra eye on this person. Bella sighed, looking over at her again.

"Jasper." She whispered, almost afraid of Lisa's reaction at that small piece of information.

They stood in silence for a moment; Lisa swallowed another spoonful of cereal, thinking about that little detail. Of course that of all people she could have fallen for, she had to fall for a vampire. Of course the vampire had to be the most dangerous one of the bunch. And of course that didn't change a bit the way her heart felt about him, if all it made her want to stay with him so he wouldn't do anything that he might regret later.

"Something happened before the Cullens left."

She looked over to Bella again, paying attention to the girl who had just broken their silence. Bella sighed loudly, passing a hand through her hair nervously, and Lisa could see her debating whether she should share or not what she had in her mind

The blonde, though, was full of all the secrets, so she decided to press Bella so she would tell her whatever it was that got her so anxious. "What is it, Bells?" she finally asked, keeping her focus on the brunette in front of her.

Bella sighed again, looked at the table, and shifted uncomfortably before she said anything. "Jasper tried to attack me." She said quietly, glancing back to Lisa to see her reaction.

Lisa felt her breath catch in her throat, though she remained with her face serious; Bella continued. "It was my birthday. I had asked them not to make anything for me, but Alice decided she would anyway." She rolled her eyes, "Everything was going smoothly, it was quite fun, actually, until I had to open the presents. I cut my finger in one of them,"

"Shit," Lisa breathed out, her eyes wide as her imagination started to run widely. Bella, the only human in the room, leaking blood in front of a bunch of hungry vampires who hadn't drank human blood in ages, probably.

She imagined it was probably similar to putting a bag of cocaine in a room full of former drug addicts – too tempting.

"A couple of drops of blood was all it took for him," Bella shook her head, looking sad. "He lashed out, like he wasn't completely himself. Emmett and Carlisle held him while Edward tried to keep me away. Then he broke free and when he was charging at me, Edward threw me backwards. I fell onto a glass table and, of course, cut myself even deeply."

"Gosh, he made things even worse," Lisa shook her head.

Bella sighed loudly, looking down at her hands again. "That incident changed everything. It was like they were suddenly aware that I could hurt myself, that I had blood in my veins." She stopped talking for a moment, and her last words came out in a low, commiserate sound. "They realized that I was a pathetic little human."

Lisa stared at her for a moment, finally understanding the way Bella's mind worked. She wasn't afraid of them, she admired them and despised the fact that she was just a simple human, with no powers, no heightened strength, no special gifts; she was just Bella Swan, a regular girl who moved in with her father and started to live in a small town in a cold, cloudy place whilst they were amazing creatures that were beautiful, almost flawless, indestructible.

She romanticized them; she wished she could be like them. Bella Swan had literally a dying wish. That realization made Lisa frown, and she didn't know if she should berate with her for thinking about something as dangerous as that, or if she should give her a pep talk about her importance.

After five seconds thinking, she decided for the latter for the moment. "Bells, you know damn well that you're not pathetic, and being a human isn't a bad thing."

Bella shook her head, her locks falling around her heart-shaped face while she stared back at her blonde friend. "They think I am. Even you think I am."

Lisa frowned in confusion. "What are you talking about?" she asked.

"Well, I'm aware of the way you guys look at me," Bella muttered, looking down at the table again. "It really irritates me the way you act as if I could break if a strong wind passed over me; I mean, yes, I'm still human, but I'm not that fragile!"

The blonde quirked one eyebrow, not missing the still human part, but she decided to let it go. For now, at least. "We know you're not fragile," she said after some time. "You're an incredible person, Bella, you have a strong head on your shoulders and I admire you for that."

"But?" Bella interrupted, sounding annoyed. Lisa smirked, besides the seriousness of the situation.

"No buts," she shrugged, shaking her head. "I know that no matter what I tell you, you won't listen. You're also very stubborn,"

"I know I am." The two friends shared a smile. The amends were made, finally. "It's really bad, you know, that you all have like super strength and speed, and I'm just…me. I have nothing special."

"Well, I certainly didn't see you as the insecure type," Bella rolled her eyes. "C'mon, Bells, you're a human, yes, but you're not of the ordinary kind. You have a vampire as a boyfriend, for Christ sake, and two best friends who can shift into wolves, and yet you're not totally crept out."

"That's because I don't think it's weird… I actually find it very amazing that you guys exist."

Lisa forced a laugh, alarms sounding in her head. "You see, I find it very amazing that you find it amazing that we exist,"

"Anyways," Bella rolled her eyes, smiling. "After they moved, I was really depressed, as you may remember. It was thanks to you and Jake that I was able to move on with my life, even if it still hurt inside." she stopped talking, getting all serious. "I'm really sorry with the way I treated you guys… It's just that… I seem to lose all sense and rationality when Edward is involved. As soon as Alice said that he was going to kill himself, I had to go. I had to save him, other way I wouldn't be able to live with myself again. I don't ask you to understand but-"

Lisa interrupted her, raising her hand. "I understand. Now that you told me the whole story, it all makes sense."

Especially after I met my mate and felt like I could kill and be killed for him out of the sudden, she thought darkly.

"I don't like him, though," the blonde continued, frowning. "He should've handled things in a different way. I mean, you're a teenager, but he is a freaking old man, for chrissake!"

"Hey!" Bella kicked her under the table. "Respect my old man."

"Whatever," Lisa rolled her eyes. "Tell me what the hell happened wherever you were,"

Bella, then, started to tell Lisa all about the little trip she had done to Italy, and how she met the vampire royalty called the Volturi. She left a small detail out of her tale, though. She didn't tell Lisa that they had requested the Cullens to turn her into a vampire so she wouldn't be considered a threat anymore. And Lisa didn't seem to notice that something was missing.

"Shit, I didn't know there was such a thing as vampire royalty," she commented when Bella finished.

"Yeah, me neither. But then again, I don't know much about vampires," the brunette shrugged. "Okay, now that I told you everything there was to tell, it's your turn to tell me what the heck was that reaction with Jasper."

Lisa sighed loudly, remembering the ordeal with a little flinch, her cheeks flushing slightly. "It's called mating, when you meet your mate, the person who is supposed to be with you for the rest of your life." She explained, remembering the stories of her clan, of her heritage. "It's been a legend amongst my people, and we never thought it was actually real since no one in my pack has ever found their true mate. According to our legends, wolves have a human counterpart, which we call hálft in Icelandic. They were created for us so we would have a way to reproduce, to pass on the wolf gene instead of keeping it to ourselves, like we eventually ended up doing," she rolled her eyes.

The next part of the story she told carefully, analyzing Bella's reaction to it with cautiousness. "In my family, we married amongst each other." She winced, knowing pretty well how weird that was. "Wolves can't reproduce together, though, so we would rely on sperm donations so the female wolves would get pregnant." She stopped, waiting to see what her friend would say.

The brunette looked curious, as always, but not disgusted or anything like that. For her, it was just another story of incredible creatures that were supposed to exist only in movies or books; now, she was surrounded by them. "So it's only for reproduction?" she wondered, and Lisa shook her head.

"Not really. Wolves are pretty social; we always have to be with a pack, because alone we're not very strong. Usually wolves get partners for life so they're never alone."

Bella slowly nodded, looking thoughtful for a moment; Lisa, then, started to worry that she would be finally crept out and decide that her weirdness was too much to take. "Did you have one?" she blurted out, getting slightly flushed by the evident curiosity in her voice. Lisa shifted her look, apprehensive about the amount of information she could share with her friend and not reveal the whole truth of why she had left to start over her life.

It was not that she didn't trust Bella; she just didn't trust the girl's reaction to her former life. It hadn't been a good one, and that's why she had left it behind in the first place. However, she also didn't want to keep dark secrets from people she considered important to her. So in the end she nodded, looking back at Bella. "I did," she said quietly.

Bella gasped in surprise, which made Lisa continue before she took the wrong conclusions. "I've never loved him, though, and it was a convenient marriage; he was in a good position in my clan, and my father wanted him as a son-in-law." She shook her head, trying to erase his memory of her mind. "We…didn't get along. I hated him and he knew it."

She felt Bella's hand come over hers, squeezing it in a sign of comfort as she had often done to her on the last couple of months. "You don't need to tell me if you don't feel comfortable," she offered, smiling gently.

Lisa smiled gratefully; she indeed didn't feel like sharing those terrible memories. She preferred them buried, locked away in a place no one could reach. "Anyways, I guess this whole mating thing isn't a legend," she huffed, shifting the conversation to where it had started.

Bella made a sound of understanding. "What are you going to do now?" she asked, voicing the question that had been repeating on Lisa's mind over and over again.

Finally, the blonde shrugged. "I have no idea." She answered honestly. "I just know that I can't be away from him. From the legends, it physically hurts to be away from your mate after you see each other. Even now I feel as if a part of me is missing; it's really a weird feeling."

"Shit," Bella muttered, biting her lip again. "I don't mean to be a bitch, but… Alice and Jasper…they're…together."

Lisa winced, felling as if she had been slapped on her face; she realized that Alice and Jasper had something by the way the little gnome of a vampire had reacted when she had tried to touch him. She was territorial like only a mate would be, so it didn't take much to understand that they had something.

However, Lisa knew for sure that Alice wasn't his mate - she was.

She frowned, looking back to Bella. "I don't think they'll be for so long…" she said closing her hands into fists under the table, so Bella wouldn't see. "After all, if he is my mate, than it only means that I am his, too. So the emo Tinker Bell will have to step aside." She had a fierce look on her face that told Bella she was being serious.

The brunette gulped, not knowing what to say to that after all Alice was her friend, too. And she and Jasper had been together for years, so she could only imagine what would happen now that Lisa had found out she was his true mate.

Would he leave Alice for her? Or was the mate thing totally platonic?

Lisa seemed to be thinking the same thing by the dark look on her face. That whole situation was new to her, and she would have to think carefully about her next steps. There was only one thing she knew for sure, though.

She wanted him.